Network Analysis Maitland Newcastle
A Newcastle University academic and a colleague from Queensland are embarking on a Hunter version of a research project that analysed the movements of Catholic figures around Victoria to uncover an alleged 16 child abuse networks within the Melbourne and Ballarat dioceses.
Newcastle sociologist Dr Kathleen McPhillips and criminologist Dr Jodi Death of the Queensland University of Technology’s law faculty will lead the project, which recently received ethics approval from both institutions. Both Dr McPhillips and Dr Death (pronounced “Deeth”), have published widely on clerical child abuse.
The Melbourne mapping was carried out by one of Dr Death’s PhD students and drew on her work, including a 2017 book on the Royal Commission and other Australian inquiries.
She has described the Catholic situation as more of a “bad barrel” than “bad apples”.
COVID restrictions permitting, Dr Death should be in Newcastle next month, when she is scheduled to join Dr McPhillips in explaining the project to members of the Clergy Abused Network, a support group formed more than 10 years ago by Maitland’s Bob O’Toole, who suffered at the hands of the Marist Brothers as a boy.